Florida Sentinel Bulletin

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida House and Senate redistricting panels will work off the other’s map.

House Reapportionment Committee Chairman Will Weatherford said Friday that he’d follow the Senate’s example.

The Wesley Chapel Republican noted that the Senate this week released proposed Senate and congressional district maps but did not draft one for the House.

Weatherford added that the House also will consider a Senate a map submitted by the Florida State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Bishop Eddie Long is taking a brief leave from the church he transformed into one of the nation’s biggest and most influential, telling congregants at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church Sunday he was going to use the time to heal his family.

As Eddie Long announced he was taking a leave from his pastor duties at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, protesters outside called for him to leave his post. “I’m still your pastor. You’ll still receive my direction,” Long said Sunday. “You’ve given me some weeks to take care of some family business.”

Long’s wife, Vanessa, filed for divorce late Thursday afternoon. She said Friday morning, via a statement prepared by the church’s spokesman that she had changed her mind but by day’s end announced the divorce was on.

In remarks released Friday evening, Long said his love for his wife of 21 years is “deep and unwavering. It remains our sincere desire to continue working together in seeking God’s will in these circumstances.”

Long, during Sunday’s service, reaffirmed he had no plans to resign, adding he had not “stepped down” but instead “stepped up.”

The House Ethics Committee announced Friday it will continue its investigation into allegations Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. or someone acting on his behalf offered to raise campaign cash for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in exchange for a Senate appointment in 2008.

The committee had previously said it would determine by Friday what course its investigation of the Democrat and son of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson would take. The younger Jackson has said he expected to be exonerated.

Instead, the committee will continue looking into allegations involving Blagojevich and whether Jackson inappropriately used government resources to angle for an appointment. The committee said in a statement that continuing the investigation “does not itself indicate that any violation occurred.”

Former professional wrestler Andre Davis, who wrestled under the name “Gangsta Of Love” and “Sweet Sexy Sensation“, has been convicted by a jury in Cincinnati, Ohio of charges that he had sex with women without telling them that he knew he had tested postive for the virus that causes AIDS.

Davis was convicted on 14 counts of felonious assault after he didn’t tell 12 sex partners about his HIV status or lied to them. The women testified they had unprotected sex with Davis.

Defense attorneys challenged whether it was proved Davis was HIV-positive and suggested the women were promiscuous.

A 103-year-old woman facing foreclosure from her home will not be forced to leave the dwelling she has lived in for the past 53 years.

The bank administering a second mortgage on the northwest Atlanta house where Vinia Hall lives will work out an arrangement so that she and her 83-year-old daughter, Kathelyn Cornelius, don’t have to move. The bank, JPMorgan Chase, announced the decision last Wednesday.

“We will work out a resolution to keep them in the home,” Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for the bank, said in an emailed statement.

“That’s a blessing,” Hall said.

The bank’s decision caps a series of telephone calls and negotiations that involved a former Atlanta City Council member, a state senator and the office of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.

There were plans to evict the women last Tuesday, but the movers and Fulton County Sheriff’s deputies sent to the home did not remove them.

Hall, whose 104th birthday is three weeks away, told a local TV station that day that she was not worried about being kicked out of her Penelope Road home.

“No, I knew that they know what they were doing. God don’t let them do wrong,” she said.

TALLAHASSEE, FL — The fired director of Florida A&M’s famed “Marching 100” band said he repeatedly warned university leaders over two decades about the dangers of hazing and that he’s been made the scapegoat for a band member’s death in which the practice is suspected.

Julian White, 71, said he suspended 26 band members for hazing two weeks before drum major Robert Champion’s death on Nov. 19. He reported his actions to university administrators, he said.

Hazing has been “rampant on university campuses,” and the suspensions would serve notice it wouldn’t be tolerated at A&M, he said.

But instead of being supported, White said, he was second-guessed, particularly from some parents of band members, and said the punishments were akin to suspending star football players. “And so the band members were apprehensive. `Doc, you think we can go without 19 trombone players?’” said White, who replaced “Marching 100” founder William P. Foster as director in 1998. “And other folks. `Doc, do you think you can do it without them?’ My comment was, it doesn’t matter, I am not going to sacrifice the performance for the principle.”

After A&M’s football team lost its annual game against rival Bethune-Cookman, Champion collapsed on a bus parked outside an Orlando hotel. The 26-year-old junior had been vomiting and complained he couldn’t breathe shortly before he became unconscious. When authorities arrived about 9:45 p.m., Champion was unresponsive. He died at a nearby hospital.

Authorities have not released any more details, except to say hazing allegedly played a role.

Less than a week later, White, a tenured professor, was fired by FAMU President James Ammons.

“I walked into his office and he said, `Doc, I don’t know any other way to put it, this is it for you,’” White recounted. “He said `you can resign or you can be terminated.’”

Ammons, meanwhile, met Monday with former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth, who was named last week to head a task force investigating what led to Champion’s death. “If some strong actions had been taken, then Robert Champion may be alive now,” said White, who was asked by the student’s family to speak at Wednesday’s funeral service.

White, who was the lead drum major as a student, said he fears the tragedy could doom the showy high-energy, high-stepping band that has performed at Super Bowls, the Grammys and presidential inaugurations and in Paris on France’s 200th anniversary.

Since Champion’s death, the school has shuttered the marching band and the rest of the music department’s performances.

Shutting it down was a meaningful decision, White said. The band would have been the first of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities to perform at Carnegie Hall. “That hurts,” White said.

Hazing has a long history in marching bands, particularly at historically black colleges, where a spot in the band is coveted for its tradition and prominence.

TEXAS – A Texas man is claiming that his former girlfriend of six months stole sperm from him in order to collect child support.

Joe Pressil is suing the Advanced Fertility Center of Texas because he claims that in 2006, his girlfriend who was a stripper named “Sugar,” underwent IVF there using sperm she culled from condoms and brought into the clinic.

Pressil tells Click2Houston that he wasn’t planning to ever have children, but three months after he broke up with his girlfriend she got pregnant. After the twin boys were born, she successfully sued him for child support. (Pressil informed media outlets that his ex was an exotic dancer who used the name Sugar, because everyone knows stripper aren’t to be trusted, particularly if they have funny stage names.)

ALABAMA – Rocrast Mack, 24, died after being brutally beaten by six prison guards after he had an incident with a female prison guard.

Mack was sentenced to 20 years in jail for selling $10 worth of crack cocaine to an undercover officer when he was 18 years old.

Severely overcrowded, underfunded and understaffed, the state’s prisons have become incubators of disturbing levels of inmate-on-inmate violence, according to prisoner advocacy and civil rights groups that work in the state. Equally troubling is a sharp rise in allegations of brutality by Alabama corrections officers, these groups say.

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of complaints coming into our office concerning guard-on-inmate assaults,” said Bryan Stevenson, executive director of EJI.

“Physical assaults of inmates by guards have become an accepted part of the culture in a lot of Alabama prisons.”

WASHINGTON – Barbara Arnwine, the Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, claims that her house in Prince George’s County in Maryland was raided by a SWAT Team for no apparent reason.

Arnwine is a well known Civil Rights lawyer who fights against voter suppression and voter I.D. laws.

The SWAT team arrived at her home at 5:30 a.m., disturbing the attorney and her family members, including an 80-year-old relative, Arnwine said. They also did not seem to have a warrant and asked for the name of the homeowner and how to spell that name.

“If they had a warrant and were targeting any of us then how could they not know our names and know how to spell them.”